Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to Web site design and more particularly to automated Web site redesign.
Description of the Related Art
The presentation of a Web site has evolved from a simple document inclusive of text or imagery or a combination or thereof, to a multi-layered navigable collection of user interface elements both statically defined and dynamically determined. Whereas in the past, the arrangement and decoration of Web page elements had been statically encoded in the Web page itself, more complex Web pages now are formatted “on the fly” through the use of external directives. In this way, the look and feel of a Web page can vary while the content itself can remain unchanged. A popular technology used in this regard is the cascading style sheet (“CSS”).
CSS is a style sheet language used for describing the look and feel of a document written in a markup language such as the hypertext markup language (“HTML”). More particularly, a CSS document can be specified once so as to set forth the look and feel of multiple different Web pages. As such, CSS has become a cornerstone specification of the World Wide Web in that almost all Web pages use CSS style sheets to describe their presentation.
CSS particularly enables the separation of Web page content from Web page presentation, including elements such as the layout, colors, and fonts. This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, enable multiple pages to share formatting, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content. Thus CSS obviates those portions of markup that would specify presentation by instead providing that information in a separate file.
In a CSS document, formatting instructions are provided for each relevant markup language element identified by a corresponding tag. Further, the CSS document may specify a priority scheme to determine which style rules apply if more than one rule matches against a particular element of a Web page. Consequently, no formatting markup need be disposed within the Web page itself as the CSS document will determine the formatting of the content based upon the application of rules driven by the cascading priorities of the priority scheme.
Of note, CSS technology can be used to “brand” a complete Web site. In this regard, a CSS document can be defined so as to capture the intended look and feel of the desired brand, complete with logo and other relevant imagery. However, to re-brand a different Web site to match that of an existing Web site, uniformity between Web sites is required. Otherwise, the design elements of the existing Web site as referenced in the CSS document will not bear a uniform relationship to the design elements of the different Web site and the CSS document cannot be applied to the different Web site to effectuate an automated rebranding of the different Web site. Instead, rebranding of the different Web site to match that of the existing Web site requires the manual determination of the formatting of the existing Web site and the manual specification of a new CSS document to incorporate the manually determined formatting before applying the new CSS document to the different Web site.